At its plenary session on Thursday 8 October MEPs once again called on the European Commission to step up its response to white collar crime, following the scandal of the “FinCEN files”, which revealed that at least $2 trillion in “dirty money” had moved between 2000 and 2017 through the world's largest banks (see EUROPE 12564/11).
“Two thousand billion US dollars - this is almost twice the amount of the seven year MFF and three times the value of the recovery and resilience instrument”, said Eero Heinäluoma (S&D, Finland), for whom this new scandal shows once again that the EU's anti-money laundering system is simply not working.
He called for a European regulation, a European financial intelligence unit and stricter supervision, either by creating a new authority or by giving new powers to the European Banking Authority (EBA).
For the Finnish MEP, detecting suspicious financial flows is one thing, but sanctioning is another. And, on this point, he felt that imposing fines was not enough and that Europol should be more involved.
For his part, Sven Giegold (Greens/EFA, Germany) called for the establishment of an authority with real powers of intervention, similar to the US Treasury's financial police, FinCEN.
The Commission's action plan (see EUROPE 12482/8) mentions the establishment of a European supervisor and a mechanism to help national financial intelligence units to cooperate better, but not a European financial intelligence unit, he regretted.
“It's a story that we know off by heart because it repeats itself, always with the same protagonists”, said Manon Aubry (GUE/NGL, France).
The French MEP also criticised the EU Council's decision earlier this week to remove the Cayman Islands from the EU's ‘black list’ of uncooperative tax jurisdictions (see EUROPE 12575/8).
“It's true that it's not as if the Cayman Islands haven't been cited in all the financial scandals of recent years. And without any notorious tax havens, especially European ones such as Ireland or Luxembourg, your pseudo ‘black’ list is above all carte blanche for financial scheming”, she said.
On behalf of the European Commission, the Commissioner for Democracy and Demography, Dubravka Šuica, assured MEPs that the institution was determined to present “ambitious” legislative proposals in the first quarter of 2021.
The Commission continues to monitor closely how Member States implement the relevant EU rules. It has recently sent questionnaires to Member States on the transposition of the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive and will examine the problems identified, it said.
In response to MEPs Sven Giegold and Ernest Urtasun (Greens/EFA, Spain), who asked the Commission to reveal the names of the Member States that had received these informal letters, and when it intended to launch infringement proceedings, the Commissioner skirted the issue, leaving MEPs unanswered. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)